Unlock the complexities of Chicago's urban development and commercial real estate landscape with the sharp insights of Mike Marks, a seasoned industry expert. This week, we're peeling back the layers of the city's transformation, from the resilience of retail markets to the evolving office spaces spurred by remote work. Marks, with his finger on the pulse of Chicago's politics, joins us to discuss how the city's educational, healthcare, and cultural strengths could be the key to rebounding from recent setbacks.
The city's business districts are undergoing a metamorphosis, and we're here to analyze the impact. We investigate how the shift to work-from-home arrangements is reshaping once-bustling streets like Michigan Avenue and State Street, and we debate the future of professional settings as companies grapple with the allure and challenges of remote work. The dialogue spans from luxe office amenities influencing employee expectations to stark disparities in real estate desirability, further amplified by contentious property tax dynamics.
This episode doesn't shy away from the tough issues. We address the scourge of organized retail crime, property tax quagmires, and the strategic conundrums facing investors in a turbulent market. Join us for an episode that not only delves into the economic and social fabric of Chicago but also offers a lens on how leadership and policy decisions echo through the corridors of commerce and community. Tune in for a candid conversation that interweaves political discourse, crime and justice, and the relentless pursuit of urban development in the Windy City.
Unlock the complexities of Chicago's urban development and commercial real estate landscape with the sharp insights of Mike Marks, a seasoned industry expert. This week, we're peeling back the layers of the city's transformation, from the resilience of retail markets to the evolving office spaces spurred by remote work. Marks, with his finger on the pulse of Chicago's politics, joins us to discuss how the city's educational, healthcare, and cultural strengths could be the key to rebounding from recent setbacks.
The city's business districts are undergoing a metamorphosis, and we're here to analyze the impact. We investigate how the shift to work-from-home arrangements is reshaping once-bustling streets like Michigan Avenue and State Street, and we debate the future of professional settings as companies grapple with the allure and challenges of remote work. The dialogue spans from luxe office amenities influencing employee expectations to stark disparities in real estate desirability, further amplified by contentious property tax dynamics.
This episode doesn't shy away from the tough issues. We address the scourge of organized retail crime, property tax quagmires, and the strategic conundrums facing investors in a turbulent market. Join us for an episode that not only delves into the economic and social fabric of Chicago but also offers a lens on how leadership and policy decisions echo through the corridors of commerce and community. Tune in for a candid conversation that interweaves political discourse, crime and justice, and the relentless pursuit of urban development in the Windy City.
Look, I think you know, may these first two steps in the right direction be the first two of many more. And I think, when you really appreciate just how exceptional our you know education system from a higher education, the universities that we have here, the hospitals that we have here, the transportation that we have available here, aesthetically, culturally, the parks, it's like, don't even try to convince me that it isn't world class. I think, unfortunately, we have made some really poor choices on who we've asked to steer the ship and I think, with more conversation and discussion around the focusing on the positives and how we can get back on track, I'm hopeful that we don't, you know, fall any further.
Speaker 2:What's the five P's? Do you remember it?
Speaker 1:Proper preparation prevents poor performance.
Speaker 2:There you go. It doesn't matter how much money we get, if we don't close, it's no money right, so no, close is no money. I'm everything that I am because of my dad's death, and I wouldn't be as successful without his death. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Jason Theory. This is season three, episode five episode five, I believe and we are having our first returning no, no, second returning guest. I had a returning guest before you, um mike marks, who is in the commercial real estate business. Um knows a thing or two about chicago politics. Um escapes to a house in michigan and likes to spend his summers in Greece. If you have the means, I highly recommend it. All right, so let's just get into it.
Speaker 2:The last time we did this podcast was two weeks before the mayor election, and the impossible happened. And the impossible happened. We elected a CTU lobbyist because that's what Chicago needed. It needed to fortify the strongest union in America that rips through all of our cash. So that's been great. What is the first year seem like to you? I mean, it's basically what we thought it would be. Murders are up. I mean, shots are up 300 percent. Crime is out of control, and and now the? And now we're suing car manufacturers because criminals can't be held liable for committing crimes. It's just too easy to commit a crime, so they should be sued. Crimes it's just too easy to commit a crime, so they should be sued. It's been interesting, to say the least, your, uh, your thoughts on the first of it bud.
Speaker 1:well, that didn't go very well. Yeah, really, you know, heartbreaking in many ways to see the city devolve further from where it was or had been. And I think we, you know, don't remember who the quote is attributable to, but you know, hope is not a business plan, and I think there was a lot of hope out there that maybe it wasn't going to get worse, or that he was going to perhaps do some things that were to surprise us to the upside, but it's just been a lot of folly and missteps.
Speaker 2:Now, basically because of where your background is and what you do, tell us how the retail market has reacted to the last year. I mean, I know it's been hard. I heard from a friend of mine, mark czar. Do you?
Speaker 1:know him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was out to drinks with him a little bit ago and he's like, listen, the, the like places that have storage, places that do soft, like he was like there are, there are, there is retail that's doing very well. He's like, you know, like you talked about the class b office space and some other stuff and some shopping malls, but that is. It's rough there, but he said there was some, some positives let's go over the positives.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say there's a lot more than just some positives on the retail end. Um, let's do that.
Speaker 2:Let's start with. We'll get into the the that let's start with. We'll get into the bad stuff. Let's start with the good stuff. Lure them in with positivity, yeah, positivity. Come to Chicago, drop a hundred million.
Speaker 1:No, I mean truly retail is having, I think, a moment. Fundamentals are as strong as they've ever been. There's just record absorption, record rent growth, record sales, record expansion by the retailers.
Speaker 2:What do you attribute that to? Because that's something that no one would like. That is like what people say to me. I can't believe anyone's buying anything in Chicago residential. I'm like well, listen, this, this, this, this, like there's a positive news doesn't sell, so break down like why there's positive news.
Speaker 1:Sure, I mean, look, I think it's intertwined with some of the negativity around and that entails, you know, the office sector. But you know, retail and office seem to have switched roles. There was the retail apocalypse I think we talked a little bit about it last time and all that led up to kind of the pandemic.
Speaker 1:The pandemic and this notion that you know, terrestrial retail as we know it, or kind of the conventional shop space. Um was dead and gone and there were, there was a proliferation of bankruptcies, uh, leading up to covid, and then covid was kind of um a knee on the back, if you will, of of some of these retailers that were either which it.
Speaker 2:It just maybe shortened the it shortened accelerated it?
Speaker 1:yeah for sure, like ripped the band-aid instead of just slowly pulling off these?
Speaker 1:there was no place to hide at that point and um. And so, as a result of where retail had been for a really long time and it was, you know, deeply frustrating um, to kind of have this e-commerce theory out there that it was going to kind of wipe out the store as we knew it, and what ultimately ended up happening is, as these stores were getting closed and some of the lower performing units within the chain were shuttered, a lot of these retailers watched their e-commerce sales in that region drop precipitously, if not vaporize entirely. And so I think that getting an opportunity to see the correlation between having a presence, not only for someone's awareness of that brand, but also the ability to return or try something on, made everyone realize they needed both. And I mean, you'd always heard the buzzword omni-channel, but I'm truly like this notion of having the right amount of stores in the right amount of square footage.
Speaker 2:Um and what do you think that's? What do you think that is having? I mean, it's our mega stores out and you want to be like these small walmarts or these smaller stores. I mean, is that, is that where things need to be, have a huge online presence and then have a place where people can return, try on or just have eyes on their store yeah, I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all, you know response.
Speaker 1:I think that for every retailer it's different, and you watch some of these larger boxes get creative, like kohl's. I mean I didn't have any real reason to ever go into a kohl's and then when they started pulling in the beauty groups I don't know, I think it was Ulta or Sephora started opening stores in Kohl's and Amazon started doing the Amazon thing.
Speaker 2:It's like you go there to drop off an Amazon box Like. Oh, let's see what else they have, and that's brilliant.
Speaker 1:Well, and it? It also, I think, underscores the the theory that you know, amazon was changing the paradigm with shoppers and making them think they could buy 10 boxes or 10 sizes of something, figure out what they wanted and return it, and it was all free. That was eroding the margin at every level, for not only the retailers, but it was also very expensive for the logistics groups that were handling it, and so they started inducing or incentivizing people to return things at a locker or a Kohl's, and I think that that lets you know that it is not a sustainable thing. Amazon was willing to lose money and kind of change the behavioral patterns of the consumer in order to get them more comfortable clicking and buying, but at the end of the day, there's some. I'm a dinosaur. I like to go into a store. I like to see how it's merchandised and to touch and feel and see what they're doing differently to compel which are also in that business, right?
Speaker 2:so when you walk into a store, do you? When you walk into a store, do you say, oh, do you look at how things are put around and and distributed? Okay, this is where the makeup is, this is where the kid stuff is, do you like? Yeah, I love that. I love grocery store. I love it in a department store. I store.
Speaker 1:I love it. In a digitally native brand that came off of the internet, came off of a two-dimensional experience and opened up a store and did something different. They had a chance to really kind of take a lot of the data that they had. They were doing the inverse of what everyone was doing, which was trying to get the credit card data of where their consumer was coming from. You know, the digitally native guys knew so much about the demos of their consumer before opening a store and they kind of knew how much inventory they need to carry. They either don't have inventory, extra excess inventory of the story and they just fulfill, you know, the at viewer you're like, do you?
Speaker 2:have to say it's like yeah, no, it's like yeah and they're like no just do it online and buy it direct and they'll ship it to you.
Speaker 1:And I'm like wow that you can't just like grab the medium for me in the back.
Speaker 2:I'll never forget when Nikki came home, but she was at South Point, she was the open a Fiori store. I'm like man, I go. They got to have brick and mortar, they do.
Speaker 1:It's, that's what. And so, as that happened, retail being in sort of a rough state or perceived difficult moment, no new construction was happening because you couldn't you know, try to convince somebody to give you a loan to build a new shopping center. Like we're over retail build a house, yeah.
Speaker 1:They're trying to build apartment buildings and senior housing at the malls. Why do you want to build a shopping center? So nothing new was getting built on a on a scale relative to what we're experiencing historically, and so that resulted in you had these new entrants that were recognizing if they came online offline. Because it was so expensive to acquire consumers through Instagram and Facebook and stuff that it started to become cheaper to try to gather them organically from the way that it used to be, and they started opening up stores and that started to absorb some of the vacancy that was out there. Some of the landlords that had watched their rents creep up and now they lost that older format to a bankruptcy or to a closure started to realize they needed to reset their basis or demise the space and create a smaller, more kind of intimate venue, and so then those started to lease up too, and then that started to restore some growth in the rents.
Speaker 1:And I think that success begets success or activity begets activity, and in the retail universe it's not a super popular thing to say, but it's not indefensible that retailers are lemmings. They see their competitor doing something and they want to do. They're like, oh, I mean, look no further than the McDonald's, burger King or Walgreens CVS. It was like Walgreens had a had a big real estate department, mcdonald's had a big real estate department, burger King just opened up across the street. You know it was like, yeah, and that's not terribly different. You see, the co-location of the digitally native guys on armitage or on southport you know, not all of them figured out they need to be there. They saw one or two or three trailblazers and then they're like, oh, that's that's, that's our spot, that's where we want to be, and so there's no space on armitage, there's no space on southport. All that rent has grown and come back beyond where it was pre-interesting.
Speaker 1:I don't think anyone talks about that, no those are the bright spots, the neighborhood you know, and also to like vibrant downtowns in the suburbs. You know the neighbor bills of the world.
Speaker 2:You go to the Burbs now it feels like it's a city, like they put, like it's like it's like Armitage Street, right, it's like everything is there they have replicated kind of that urban experience in the Burbs a lot of.
Speaker 1:I think some of it was a function of just people leaving the city during covid after watching it you know, sort of attack itself and uh and, and then a lot of the folks were working from home. So like we need better restaurants and like the groundswell you know grew, some of the chefs from the city moved out to the suburbs and they started being like I can't believe there's nothing out here for people to eat and rents half.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they started opening up spots.
Speaker 1:I mean you saw Lake Colonial and Lake Forest and places like that.
Speaker 1:There's some great spots on the western suburbs and I think they just leveled up and then, as that happened and as those store sales picked up, retailers were starting to pay attention differently to pockets like that or because a lot of the dual income whether with or without kids that live on either side of Southport, if you're working from home and you're walking up down the street or pushing a stroller or just going to grab coffee, that is a captive audience.
Speaker 1:So those are bright spots for sure, and I mean even places like Rush Street or Oak Street. They've been the beneficiary of some of the larger format stores that are on Michigan Avenue, leaving to kind of open up something that was in a slightly kind of cooler spot and that wasn't, you know, didn't have cop cars on every corner with the flashing lights on at night, like I don't know about you, but whoever came up with that idea to sort of quell the the criminal activity was like when I see a police car with its blue lights I don't know about like, oh, that looks like it's safe over there.
Speaker 1:I'm like what just happened over there? Yeah and um, and you know they had that on every corner. It's like if you drove down michigan avenue at 10 o'clock, nine o'clock at night, you'd stroke out from all the blue lights that were on every corner. And it's not like those guys were vigilantly sitting in their car looking for trouble. They were like on their phones, just like you know blue lights going sitting at the door.
Speaker 2:I never went down. I would never have been on michigan at that time. It's crazy. I made a point of it just because it's my world and it was heartbreaking. How is Michigan Avenue and State Street? I mean State Street's tough, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I mean it's at the mercy of the loop it used to be. I would suggest that it was more of where Chicago shopped per se than Michigan Avenue. Michigan Avenue was like a tourist Chicago shopped per se than Michigan Avenue. Michigan Avenue was like a tourist destination.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like higher-end stuff yeah and all the hotels that are up and down that stretch. It was a celebrated it has been a celebrated corridor and so you'd want to walk. The avenue and State Street was. You know, you were officing down the loop and you needed to run an errand, you needed to grab something. You just you know you were officing down the loop and you needed to run an errand and you needed to grab something. You just, you know, most everyone was represented in one way or another. I mean, it wasn't Nordstrom, it was Nordstrom Rack, it wasn't you know, but there was kind of everyone there and without the bodies and the footfall that comes to work every day, those stores suffered.
Speaker 2:Stores, restaurants, everything. Do you think they'll be? I mean, I've had a couple clients call me up who are in chicago versus being in california, because they can work remote. They have friend, their family lives in chicago and they don't want to pay california prices so they live here. Three people this year called me up and said hey, listen, we're getting a call, call the worker called office and there's a word they use and he's turned to office return.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get it, let's return to work yeah, he had like a phrase um, and he said he said listen, he goes, they're bringing us all back or they're gonna let us go. Do you think that could happen in chicago, like are we seeing that? Or?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think that we're we're starting to see it more and more and more. I mean, I think that a lot of these businesses are recognizing that they have this expense a fixed lease expense that they signed, you know, five years ago and they've got it for another five years and they're like all right, we can't just continue to burn through this rent expense. We don't have the same kind of connectivity as a work unit and the collaboration that comes out of being in an office together and the accountability that comes out of it is, you know, pretty significant. And I think that I don't miss I don't live far from downtown but I don't miss the 30 minute commute when you know in rush hour. But you know, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, that commute is real. It's really Monday and Friday that is dead, it's dropped off. And I do think that the mandate of you have to be in the office three to four days a week I don't know if we're ever getting back to five full days in the office. I don't, I don't know. That certainly feels.
Speaker 2:I don't like. We're always on the road right, we're talking to people, we're meeting people. So your office I mean I come in every day, but sometimes I won't, but you're a unique bird. Yeah, I just. Well, I also live across the street. How do people, Um, how do people sit in their office, in their house, and not see anybody and just stay there for eight hours, nine hours, for like five days straight? Well, I would I would.
Speaker 1:That's a different subset.
Speaker 2:I know, but they're throwing. Everybody got thrown into that.
Speaker 1:They can't be good for people. No, I mean I think especially for the younger portion of the workforce. You know they were missing out on just the organic. You know mentorship. That was happening when you have senior partners at a law firm or senior brokers at a real estate firm or senior. You know senior traders at an investment firm and I think the amount of knowledge transfer that used to happen in the work environment when everyone's sort of scattered, it doesn't transfer. You don't have those water cooler conversations. You don't have the ability to pop into a senior member's office and ask them a quick question. Yeah, you can pick up the phone or you get them on a zoom, but it's just different.
Speaker 1:And I think the and especially if you're young and you're trying and you're ambitious and you're trying to kind of make something and they're like, you know, work from home and you have a roommate or you know, and you got like two other people on their computers or on the zoom all day and you don't have and you live in a smaller apartment, that's tough sledding, I think, and so you know it's very different if you're, if you had kids and all of a sudden, like you got to know them, you developed a relationship with them that you didn't have Cause you got to eat breakfast or lunch and dinner with them or go play in the park for an hour and come back. I think a lot of people that got that experience and bonded differently with their partner or with their, you know, offspring. It was like I don't miss, you know, the office.
Speaker 2:And I think a lot of-. Yeah, but if you go into the office and everyone else is staying home, the odds of you climbing the ladder have got to be like 3X.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think Sam Zell said it, you before, I mean that's what I would do.
Speaker 2:Everyone else is home. I'm going in.
Speaker 1:This is all gonna, you know, end the moment that the guy who thinks he, you know, is doing a pitch via zoom and somebody else jumped on a plane and went and met with the client face to face and you lose it, he's like. You'll figure out pretty quickly that you know the playing field is not level no, virtually it can't be.
Speaker 1:So I mean, I agree, I think that there's no way that this goes on in perpetuity.
Speaker 1:But I do think there's a structural or kind of systemic shift in the way that people want to work or want to spend their day and time. And I also think it begs the question for a lot of these businesses like what can we be doing to create a more compelling value proposition within our four walls? What rituals can we start pushing them? Yeah, I think it demands that they get more creative to inspire me to be there, whether it's in the quality of space, in the caliber of experience that happens there. You know, everyone's a little more discerning. They got to design their own day during covid and figure out whether it was working out. They didn't like to work out at 6 am, but they had to because they had to be at the office by 9. Now they could kind of do their little morning program, do a few emails and then work out at 10 and jump back into something, and it was like that was much more conducive to whatever their lifestyle was.
Speaker 2:When I went to before COVID and I went and visited clients that were at LinkedIn and I walked in there they had coffee bars. They had like rooms you could hang out. They had pool rooms. They had like you could play pool, you could take a break. They had all you can eat at all times and it was all free. I was like man, this is amazing.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't want to be home I want to be here, right. Well, the amenity, because I can go eat at any time. For me, I would fucking love that, the amenity creep that you guys probably witnessed firsthand in residential, where every tower that went up had some. They were trying to kind of offer something else beyond what the last new.
Speaker 2:They were imitating the rental buildings. I guess the rental buildings, I guess the rental buildings came in like you don't?
Speaker 1:have to leave. Right, then they're like all right, let's, let's just self-contained space, like give, give them everything. Yeah, my clients at one chicago.
Speaker 2:It's like dude, I don't take the elevator down to whole foods, I go up. They have a dog park that's heated. He's like I got the gym. I take the private elevator into the gym. So he's like I think the gym's like a hundred thousand square feet. He's like he's like I got the gym. I take the private elevator into the gym. He's like I think the gym's like 100,000 square feet. He's like I never have to leave. They have many offices. It's not WeWorks, but they have that concept there. They have boardrooms there.
Speaker 1:So if you want to bring everybody there, I mean in the race for talent, these firms are looking at the office buildings and sort of saying, if we're competing for, you know the, you know America's or the world's best and brightest, we have to be able to offer them a space that you know inspires them to to be like oh, this is, if I do have to go to the office every day, this is where I want to come. And if you're, you know, if you're competing for that, that talent, and you're in a class B or an underwhelming building or something that's a little old and outdated and doesn't offer that, unless you're giving them something differently in a financial package, like if it's all things are equal, they're not going to sort of the.
Speaker 2:So the new buildings that we're seeing in Fulton Market and all these new buildings that are gorgeous and whack and all this stuff, they're not having issues, they're doing okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that it is a tale of two cities or two worlds. I mean, the Class A product is, I think, pretty well occupied and pretty well leased, and that's, I think, something that we don't talk enough about in Chicago is that it really hasn't had the same kind of migration that South Florida has had or the same international appeal that New York has had, where you know, when the big, shiny office building opens and the best and brightest firms move there like someone ultimately back fills the less desirable space that they left.
Speaker 2:In Chicago. Chicago, it's like a zero-sum game.
Speaker 1:The offices buildings in the loop are suffering as a direct result of the sexy new buildings that have gone up in full market. It's not like there's somebody that's willing to pay a certain price for that You're reading about the South Street.
Speaker 2:What do we do with that space? You can't convert it to residential. Well, I mean, I think that there was just that's like I went to a thing that the Crown was at the sign and he's like he goes you can't even, it's not even worth it, to tear it down. It's like if you gave us the building for free, we would still lose money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, because the tax I mean.
Speaker 2:That's another thing I don't know if we're going to get into property taxes. I mean, how does the commercial tax double or triple during COVID when no one's there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a broken system. That's how I mean you. Just, you know and I think this last election was, you know, it was pretty clear where and how the assessor is trying to change the way in which.
Speaker 2:But they're not going on value. Let me tell you a story. Okay, I have a building that I bought in 22. And that was the assessment year. Right, I bought it before the assessor came there. So they've got the closing They've got.
Speaker 2:The building had been on the market for three years. So there's like incredible history. They started at a ridiculous price by the time they got to, by the time that I bought it, it was listed at one three and I think I picked it up at one one five an old time. So I have a closing, I have history of everything. In 2023, I got the 22 reassessment. In 2023, I got the 22 reassessment at 2 million.
Speaker 2:They have a closing, they have an appraisal, they have history that it couldn't even sell at 1.5 for a year and a half. I sent them all of this in front of a judge and their comment was to me, since I was a real estate agent, it didn't matter. They just try to find anything, you know, to ballot. Now I'm suing the city and I had to take it to the state. But I mean, like that building went from making money to basically like scratching or a little bit, and I don't understand how they think that people are going to survive like think if I was just a homeowner well, that was the intent when this current assessor got an office was to shift the burden from the residential owners to the commercial property owners.
Speaker 1:And, um, you know, and, and, in the defense of the process it's, they're not supposed to chase the sale, it's supposed to be based on a, you know, a collection of like kind or similar assets.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but if it's been on the market for three years at $800,000, what you value it, that's the value.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a broken system, so then you have to hire somebody to appeal it, and then Where's?
Speaker 2:Madigan, is his firm still rocking? That's what I need to hire.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you'd want to hire him today, is he?
Speaker 2:in jail, yet I don't know how many stipends does that guy have?
Speaker 1:The system is broken. There's no place that's more complicated between the equalizers and the levy and the districts.
Speaker 2:They just changed that equalizer to make you feel like you've done stuff like oh, my value went down, but oh, but the multiplier went up yeah so my house is worth 50 000 less.
Speaker 1:My taxes went up twice and I mean I feel like we touched on it a little bit in the last one, but you know we were talking about the loop. You have, you know, a hundred million square feet, 75, I don't know some, some pretty staggering number, and I think we can all agree that there's also a staggering number of space that is no longer occupied. So when you don't have those ones, whether it's the restaurant that closed or the store that closed because the, the loop was empty, or the six different firms, and they go in there and say we're empty now, right, so they get an empty assessment.
Speaker 1:Well, you can do a vacancy appeal, but again, where and how you get assessed prior to that appeal I mean you can file some, I think, notice around where and how your occupancy changed, but I don't think a lot of those owners saw a direct or an immediate kind of correlation between their assessed value and their tax bills and what their occupancy or ny had had become as a result of some of these. You know departures and it was like now enter the game where you go and you fight it and then you go to.
Speaker 2:you know the various why can't we just bk the city, like Detroit I think that, and just break? I mean I know he's not going to because he's a CTU stooge. But why can't we just say when we get our tax bill, when everybody gets their tax bill, you flip it around. There's those numbers, the shortfalls are insane, like we're just paying interest. I mean it's the same thing with the government. We only pay the interest on a trillion dollars of interest a month. We're only paying the interest. There's no, we're not paying any of the actual debt down in the city of Chicago or the government. You know, and I'm sure California and New York are the same.
Speaker 2:But how, how can this? I mean I, I, this guy is is out of control. But I just go back to the point when the CTU had their second strike going into the start of the year and we held firm for 10 days and then Lori just rolled over. If we don't get, if we don't get a fucking handle on the ctu and what it's doing to our money, we're like I just don't understand, I don't know how it works. I mean there's uh, the shortfall is insane. You ever turn around and look at your tax bill and like this is where your money's going.
Speaker 1:No, I try not to like oh dude my tax bill and I look away.
Speaker 2:It's all schools, it's all the. Ctu and we have like one of the worst school systems.
Speaker 1:I was going to say our test scores have been going up ever since the. You know this.
Speaker 2:It's no, it's a disaster, and you know, I think that, that's whether it's an inevitability or, you know, it's certainly plausible. I mean, they keep doing what they're doing. They have to. Yeah, you cannot.
Speaker 1:You cannot pay off the debt and you can't tax your way out of a problem, or no?
Speaker 2:that's everyone's leaving like they're now right.
Speaker 1:And so you lose your high caliber citizenship. Uh, because of whether it's crime or the cost. And now what do you do to the balance of people that decided to stick around and fight it out, or because they love Chicago or they have some inexplicable or inextricable connection to it? Oh, tax them for staying here and so like the burden and it becomes punitive to stick around instead of prosperous. And the way you do that is you attract businesses who have jobs and growth, and you get more corporate citizens and you raise the tide for the boats. You don't keep putting more sand on the sinking ship and taxing people, whether it was the transfer tax or I mean, let's talk about transfer tax.
Speaker 2:Everyone thinks, you know, everyone thinks the transfer tax was a tax for the millionaires. Let me tell you something that transfer tax only affects 1.8% of all the residential stuff. That would happen. It was a flat-out attack on retail and large multi-unit owners and large multi-space. I mean, how do they? They're just going to pass on to the renter. I don't understand. Like you know, and then you look at, you know he wouldn't broadcast. And then somebody commented yesterday on Instagram and I commented. I got a ton of likes. I was like I like they're like oh, you know, it got voted down by the rich, this and this. I'm like no, we got voted down because there was no plan. The plan got leaked of who was getting the money. Why is the seat? Why are teachers getting housing off of a homeless plan? I mean, everything is so corrupt.
Speaker 1:Yeah I know and I don't. You know, we certainly aren't going to solve it in the j theory, but I think, in talking about the fact that it was a half-baked idea, that I think people sniffed out or saw through and recognized that it had nothing to do with Rich Report. It had to do with. Hey, this is not right. This administration, or at least with a voice in the city, was saying look no further than the case study that took place in Los Angeles. They tried this.
Speaker 1:They raised one-eighth of what or one-tenth of what they $150 million out of $980 million and it was a complete fail Crushed the velocity of the market, and then now there's a referendum, I think, to change the Constitution, to then repeal it and not allow something like that to happen again. So it's it's killing the market again, because but they had a visual of it, but that didn't work.
Speaker 2:Exactly there's hard.
Speaker 1:Look no further than this this oh, they tried it. It didn't work. Okay, let's not mess with that, because we don't need to monkey up the program. Uh, we already kind of see the evidence of of how this went in another place. That's a you know a disaster and they, uh, they tried to, they tried to pull it off anyway and and now they're now they're going to change it in california and nobody's buying anything because no one wants to have to file a refund to get their money back if it gets in 10 years.
Speaker 1:So people aren't buying things again and things aren't selling at the same clip that they had prior to the to the increase. And you know we're just and he's still stuck on it he's like we have like california's here in stupidity.
Speaker 2:Okay, so they're here. This is like ultimate stupidity. California's probably just a tad underneath that, and we're here and we're just literally doing everything that state does to. I think we're like, listen, we can be worse, we could, we they're.
Speaker 1:They're upset that they're not as stupid as the west coast I think there was an encouraging sign out of, you know, san francisco, where they I heard they're starting to change things, yeah they. I think they recognize that they're like whatever we've been doing is wrong. Is it working? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you did you ever watch Billions?
Speaker 2:No, because it got really weird when they're urinating on each other and I was like on the first episode, I'm like, I'm not into this.
Speaker 1:There's a scene where Wendy, the performance coach for Axe and married to Paul Giamatti's character, was like Paul was, everything was sort of crumbling for him and she was like 180. And he was like what do you mean? He's like well, she's like whatever you're doing, is it working? Just try the opposite.
Speaker 2:Dude. George Costanza had his best run when he did the 180.
Speaker 2:George, like he literally ordered the opposite of what he always eat every day and the girl was eating the same food. She worked for the Yankees. He wouldn't sleep with her, even though he wanted to. On the first date she fell in love with him. He got a job at the Yankees, literally, and he said this opposite's no longer like. I don't know what he says, but this is not my religion. He's like everything I've done in my life has been led me to this point, which has been wrong. That's in the 90s you didn't even, we didn't even need, we didn't even need that show. Every. Everything in life can be fixed with this, with seinfeld, literally everything in life can be fixed with seinfeld, then just opposite day.
Speaker 1:This is a. This is a notable jason theory no, I'm telling you it can't.
Speaker 2:I've been saying that since the 90s Everything in life can be fixed with Seinfeld.
Speaker 1:Well, we're more attracted to a familiar hell than an unfamiliar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right. So, and then, in terms of, so that's retail which is doing better. And then I also think let's stick on the thing. I also think that the voting down of the bring them home First off, who are we bringing home? I never understood there's aliens coming down. What's bring them home? It should have been like give me your money, give me your money, bill. It's just like the naming of these, all the names that politicians use on both sides. They're fantastic. They must do tests, right? Oh, I doubt they do any tests.
Speaker 2:You don't think so, because I bring like 10 people and say, do you like bring them home or steal your money, and they're like do you bring your home? It's probably going to work better. So that gets voted down and then Eileen Burke gets voted in versus Fox's person, that know person that she's on. I think those are both positives. And they tried to steal the election. You know they found those 10,000 votes a week after the election. I was like, oh my God, did they find them from the river or something? I was listening to on that on Chicago cheating on elections and the election fraud which is just rampant. But I was listening to JFK, bobby Kennedy Jr, and they were talking about the Kennedy election and they like, years later they pulled out like thousands and thousands and thousands of votes from Blake Michigan. They found in bags that were all for Nixon.
Speaker 2:Oh, he was just on a podcast with Schultz. It's awesome. It's honestly one of the best things. I'm a podcast freak. I mean that's kind of why I do it. That's all I do in the car. Schultz and Bobby Kennedy, I'm telling you right now, find that. And he goes into how his uncle and his dad were murdered. He goes into everything that happened. He goes into how cia was messing around, not only with lsd, but the cia was also messing around with uh hypnosis for people to go kill people. It's crazy man. If that guy gets close to being elected, he will get killed. And schultz asked him him he goes. He's like do you fear your life? He's like this is something I got to do. He's like they've killed everybody in your family. He's like. He's like, yeah, he's like, but it is what it is and it won't give him secret service protection. It's the only person at his level that Biden will not give it to him the only. It's the only person.
Speaker 1:That's curious.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I don't agree with everything he says, but man, he wants to rock the boat, which I like. Yeah, You're a boat rocker, he wants to rock the boat. Man, he wants to get rid of the CIA, FBI, Like he wants the department of education. He's kind of like he's kind of on the same breaking down the system, like kind of like Viveca's right, Like he's like, listen, this is you know. But they're like this is what these people do. It's really, it's really good. And then a next CIA guy was the next one on Schultz and he was bringing up the stuff on the Kennedys. Really cool, All right, let's get back to chicago and enough of the kennedys and chicago's doing elections anyways, I think those two things kind of show. Like you were talking about frisco. I think that shows a little bit of movement.
Speaker 1:It absolutely does, and there are two steps in the right direction as far as I'm concerned and and a long time in the making, I mean I mean we hired, we hired.
Speaker 2:We hired somebody that wants to put people that shoot people behind bars. This is, I mean, I never thought I'd have to be voting on that, but that's kind of great and lowering the retail theft threshold back to what it had been.
Speaker 1:What is it?
Speaker 2:What is it? Is it still a thousand, or do they? I know they tried. I think they moved it to 1500 in California in some places.
Speaker 1:I think here it's a thousand and it used to be like 300, but I mean effectively what happened, at least at the manager level. A lot of the retailers and folks that I've talked to were like this the store ops were like if, if you see somebody shoplifting or stealing, like it's not worth your life, they're not going to go to jail and emboldened a whole, you know, group of organized criminality to kind of just go in and take what they want and leave and at a certain point that that you know, shrinkage or theft starts to become cost prohibitive shrinkage. Yeah, different shrinkage, but uh, you know, and it just it's one. It's an unsafe environment to work in where you're just like is this person in here, then you don't want to be kind of doing things.
Speaker 2:I don't want to be there unless I'm a worker, if I feel like I'm unsafe, right. That's why walgreens closed. We had the flagship walgreens here in bucktown and the sophia was getting at the pharmacy and four guys walked in, grabbed. I'll never forget sophia called me up and told me grab cases of beer and bunch of liquor and everything. Just walked down. Yeah, and Sophia looked at the, the, the, the cop that was there or whatever security. She's like what are you going to do? He's like they come in every Thursday They'd get all their liquor and they leave. He's like I'm not going to get into a gunfight with people that are stealing liquor, that are I'm going to get in trouble for for even like trying to stop them. Yeah, and then you know a year later that beautiful Walgreens is closed. Sad state of affairs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's going to be a bookstore now.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't think they're going to go there. That's what I said. That place is going to thrive.
Speaker 1:I've missed Barnes and Noble. I was excited to see that announcement that they're, but that's a, that's a problem, the, the, the theft piece of it, and I think what Eileen has wanted to do restore some order and to you know one the police have to know that the, the system is designed to support.
Speaker 2:Support them.
Speaker 1:They're risking their lives every day, and why would you if the person that you arrest isn't going to be prosecuted? And so you know it's hard to blame them and at the same time you know it's not hard to figure out how we got here. You know as sad and as frustrating as it is so to listen to her and to hear about how, I mean, there's a lot of, you know, simpatico kind of commentary that she grew up here and she can't bear to see it devolve any further. And I think the other thing that you mentioned you know, leaving the bench to go and do this and some of her peers that are on the bench are also leaving early to help her do this is to like restore the state's attorney's office to a place where people like young, bright minds want to work and they want to learn and they want to be part of kind of a not only a tutorial and a education, but an experience that builds an unbelievably impressive track record and resume. And we lost that. Nobody wants to work at the state's attorney's office.
Speaker 2:Does anybody want to work something? Wherever you doesn't matter. That's what I mean. That's that'll eat at your core Right. Think about showing up retail space for 10 years to a thousand people a year and no one wants it. That's what it's like. You're like there's nothing here that I can do. When I talked to the bead cops in Bucktown because they're always walking around, there's one, there's one, that's a one female one. She's got kids, stuff like that, and she's like you know, I grew up here. She's like she was. I don't know what to do anymore. You know, when sophia got robbed, it was the same beat cop and when I went over there and was talking to her she was like apologetic. And I'm like you don't have to be apologetic, you can't do your job. She goes. I know exactly who the kids are. They just got released and she goes and they just come back and there's nothing we can do about it it is brazen.
Speaker 1:They're emboldened by the fact that they don't know anybody that's actually gone away for doing what they did. They're out the next day. They taunt the judges and they taunt, you know, the officers. Like what are you? I'm gonna be out tomorrow and it's, listen, it's so organized.
Speaker 2:I will. I will tell you when Sophia got robbed, I was impressed talking to the police and how it all works right. The home station is out of state so it's federal. They know how to get you know. They know if they steal, like the reason why people, the reason why there's so many stolen cars, is that if they're in a stolen car, even if you, if you know the person is, they can't attribute the crime to them because it's not registered to them, right. So all the cars they drive are all registered to girlfriends or boyfriends, people that don't commit the crimes, right, that don't have records. It's so perfectly like. They know the laws and it's perfectly executed. It's it's. These are not fly-by-night crimes, they're you know. And then everything, all the all the goods go into a home base. That home base is out of the state. You think the feds want to deal with your stolen computer and some shoes. You got better things to do. It's really interesting how it's done like very, very, very organized.
Speaker 1:When you give anyone enough time to get organized, you know, ultimately they do, and I think we've given them ample time to figure out the cracks and the holes and the corners to cut. So it's not, you know, mystifying that somebody eventually was like well, wait a minute. You know, like at no point did anyone in any prior in in Lori's administration or the present one, decide that something needed to change. All they kept doing was rolling heads at the top of you know, the police union and it was like where, where, where are we going with this? These guys continue to get smarter, more efficient.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's organized. Organized. I don't know if there's like a special, I don't know if there's different laws for organized crime, but this is not well organized retail is.
Speaker 1:This is a very real thing.
Speaker 2:I mean you, you don't 12 people don't walk into louis vuitton and start snatching stuff and have cars do't remember the amount ever of a car driving through the front door of a store.
Speaker 1:It's, like you know, weekly. It had become a weekly occurrence and they would use a stolen car. They would crush the storefront, run in, take whatever they wanted and have another kind of stolen vehicle waiting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you want to get rid of carjackings. Change that law. That's literally. They changed it. That's where carjackings went bananas, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's also, you know, the car manufacturer's fault for making them too easy to crash.
Speaker 2:It's a joke, yes, and in California I was listening to something yesterday. They literally they preach please just leave your keys on the seat of your car, so if someone wants to steal it, you know no one's going to get hurt, or this or that.
Speaker 1:Who I mean? Who comes up with these ideas?
Speaker 2:I don't know, but in Frisco no one locks their doors. No one. No one locks their doors. They keep their trunk when they park. The windows are down, the doors are unlocked, the trunk's open. They don't want your car, they want the goods. No one locks their car, so your windshield doesn't get broken.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, that's a sad state of affairs. I had not heard that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude, oh, my Lord, All right. So what about Rezzy? Did you see that sale? That just happened, jp Morgan, they had that place on Lakeshore I think 850 Lakeshore where they paid like 144 and they took a loss and just sold for 80 million. I did read about it. I would just think Rezzy at that. I mean, is that all from the taxes? Because I would think Rezzy's doing great with the rents.
Speaker 1:It's a good question. I don't know, and that building's a prison.
Speaker 2:It's an awful building, okay.
Speaker 1:It's awful.
Speaker 2:I've not been in it. Like each room has a window like this big right so you can kind of not see out or something. It's a terrible building.
Speaker 1:Well, you know.
Speaker 2:It just caught my eye that a rental building would be doing bad.
Speaker 1:Well, look, I think, for all the reasons we talked earlier, if you are at the bottom end of the continuum as far as this building's a dump, yeah, if it's the least desirable option, where do you cut rents to? Because everyone has been sort of taught look for whatever amenity or whatever kind of option it's coming with. And the more new product that has gone up because of how strong the residential market had been, then it makes the old ones look even worse. And so, you know, are you cutting your rents to? Appeal to who? And they probably bought it at a very different, you know pro forma thesis than and whether they had a floating rate loan or not.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's a big story within the commercial world too. Is that a lot of these, a lot of these big purchases they didn't lock rate and are we going to have a great reset? I mean, it feels like we're having it.
Speaker 2:It you know I think it's a.
Speaker 1:It seems a little bit more orderly.
Speaker 2:Because we've still got some time right. So if everyone refinanced even two years ago, you're still below four. It's been the last two years. We've gone from four to the eights and nines.
Speaker 1:Well, the bigger thing, at least from the world and the seat the world as I was seeing it and the seat I was sitting in last year to have rates run the way they did. It was unprecedented, and I mean, I think it was like I had read in 40 years we had had one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we went through that and so when you were, when you were in the middle of a transaction, or if you just close on it and you were trying to secure debt. It was moving on you like every 30 to 45 days and I think if you told anybody where it was going to end at the end of the year, they probably would have just taken the pain, taken it on the chin and been like all right, let's just do it.
Speaker 2:People are like let's wait for a dip, let's wait for a dip, and it never did.
Speaker 1:And so then all of a for, you know, a floating option, like there are more deals that I've heard about that are upside down as a result of that, as a result of them not locking rate because they were in the market to refinance or to finance last year and they couldn't and it, and because nobody knew where it was going to end up, everyone was sort of willing to ride it out and that was the wrong bet, like when they started rising on me is when I bought.
Speaker 2:When it started rising I was buying that building building and like the three little buildings behind. And then I just remember it was like three, three and a half, four, and I was on the phone with Mantis I mean not Mantis, John from Dreyfus and I was like I was like man, there's gotta be a dip. It was like four, four and a quarter and I looked at, I called him up, I go, there's gonna be no fucking day, Just like me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it was during the deal. So we started, I underwrote the deal at like two and a half and we ended the deal at four and a quarter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean a good, a good chunk Double Of what transactions I was working on did not make last year as a result of that. Got it marketed, got it sold, you know, under contract. And then they're working through their debt and all of a sudden they come back with a retrade to say, hey, when we priced it, the 10-year was here. It's now here and the spread's even wider. So, you know, can we get a price reduction? And the sellers are like, no, that's not, you know.
Speaker 2:But then what do the sellers do?
Speaker 1:Well, I think that some of them regret not giving it to them, but you know, hindsight, they all feel like they would have done something different with the benefit of hindsight, but at the time they were obstinate.
Speaker 2:They were, you know frustrated, you got to fill it. You got to fill it and get on to the next part of your life, because you don't know, you don't know. Listen, if you lose out on money, you're like damn it. But when you get destroyed, the other, like you know, I'm saying like the risk reward is. So even in housing, the risk reward is always to get the deal done, because time is a killer right. You know, like no one ever waits and makes more money. You wait, I mean, you mean you do, but it's rare. You mostly wait because things are going against you and you lose. Well, I think that there is a big difference between commercial and residential.
Speaker 1:I think a huge component of the residential experience or transaction is emotionally driven, and on the commercial side it's financially underwritten, and so it's like if the deal doesn't work or no longer has the return that you require as an institutional investor or as-.
Speaker 1:As an investor, I get it, but as a seller, man get out Well, but I think that some of them if you have a lease that's expiring and you think you have below market rent, or that was the attractive piece of the story you know the narrative. You're telling the market and they're saying they're going all right. Well, I wasn't going to ride out that lease and try to re-tenant the space and get a higher rent. But you know what, screw it. If they're not going to buy it at the price we agreed on, I'll do that.
Speaker 1:And then what they don't realize is that you know if, if there's costs in that too, and but I think they oversimplified it in their mind's eye or didn't account for the massive sort of resetting that was going to occur that you know you're not going to outkick the coverage of the entire market just because your one asset might have some some lift and uh I've always found that interesting, like when I'm driving.
Speaker 2:Like, for instance, we've been in this space for a year now and we were over by goddess in the grocer. We're familiar with that, so our rent was pretty high and we're like listen, we can't roll with this rent anymore. And what I don't understand is it's been empty for a year where we've been here for a year. If he would have just lowered the rent, we just would have stayed and he would have had. I just I'm trying to understand why. This is the last thing I'll ask you. I'm trying to understand why people leave retail spaces empty for so long versus like filling them so at least money's coming. And I don't know. If there's a like is there? There's gotta be a reason for it, Cause I don't. Why is Damon half empty? Like lower your price and fill it at least.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think in some cases it's they, they, they. They can't Right, like they either have a basis that requires them to generate. You know the I think it's the there's a hope being a business plan in those cases where someone's like look, I know that this deal down the street got done at 60 bucks a foot and these guys are paying 35. I should be able to get 45 or 50. They're asking me to go to 25. Nah, I don't think I want to do that. Or at 25, maybe he starts losing money. So he thinks that maybe the market's better than it is. A lot of times, going back to the same comment, the benefit of hindsight is a game changer. But I don't even think it's hindsight. You own rental buildings. I think if he knew a year from now, you own rental buildings and I own rental buildings.
Speaker 2:Okay, would you rather have your place? Would you rather take $, either take a hundred dollars less or not, take a rent increase or whatever it is and have it open and have it. And have it open for three months or four months or have hey, listen, I've got somebody in there. The monies continue to come in well, but along those lines it.
Speaker 1:I would rather have it occupied and and income generating than vacant and sort of you know a big chest with no money in my pocket, saying oh, I think I can get four credit checks Right.
Speaker 1:So there's still some, but I think that most you don't end up in real estate cycles because people think that way. People don't think that way. They they tend to fall into the theory that trees grow to the sky. If I'm getting three grand a month, I'm going to get through 3,500 next year when the lease is up. They, they want to believe. They hope that you know real estate appreciates. They hope that they're going to get more rent next year than they're getting now. And and when you're in the middle of the forest, you kind of have no idea what the rest of the trees really look like. So until you zoom out and go I don't know if this is you know there's more supply or there's less demand or whatever it is that that will function, the way economics function. You would make a different decision, I think, if you had all the data. But instead of you're like but my rent should go up. It's always goes up. Real estate always goes up. No, it doesn't.
Speaker 2:You know, I think we have the. I think we have the benefit of owning real estate and also seeing all of the mistakes that people make and being like just I just don't want that mistake.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of it is the allure that you don't get. You don't get a cycle, you don't get a reset if things always went up or if people acted and behaved in a manner that recognized that this stuff is cyclical. So if I just don't get so greedy and try to push these rents here or over lever myself, then I will be fine. But it's not, you know, that conservative mindset or that orientation is not, I think, the preponderance of ownership. Out there it's. You know, they either got into real estate because they heard it's a place to create wealth, and then they think it's just going to keep going up, and then they end up. You end up making a couple of good bets. It's no different than going to Vegas and winning the first time If you bought a house and flipped it, or you bought a house and rented it and it made money, and next you've got six rentals. Good luck getting lucky on all of those.
Speaker 2:I just want my debt service paid, I don't care about anything else.
Speaker 1:All of those Like you guys want my debt service paid. I don't care about anything else. You, you know you have a more seasoned and cynical. You know, take on things as you've seen. The dark side, the dark side.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so any closing remarks on Chicago.
Speaker 1:It's a beautiful.
Speaker 2:I drive down Lake shore drive. I'm like what an amazing city it is. It is.
Speaker 1:And it's snowing. In april it's beautiful. Um, look, I think you know, may these first two steps in the right direction be the first two of many more. And I think, when you, when you really appreciate just how exceptional our, you know, education system, from a higher education, the universities that we have here, the hospitals that higher education, the universities that we have here, the hospitals that we have here, the transportation that we have available here, aesthetically, culturally, the parks, it's like, don't even try to convince me that it isn't world-class. I think, unfortunately, we have made some really poor choices on who we've asked to steer the ship. And, you know, I think, with more conversation and discussion around the focusing on the positives and how we can get back on track, I'm hopeful that we don't, you know, fall any further into it.
Speaker 2:Any early thoughts on the next mayor, because this guy's approval rating is the only approval rating that's lower than Biden's.
Speaker 1:I actually. Well, I'm not going to share names, but I do think I'm optimistic that it's going to be an exceptional. You think Janulius is going? To run no, but I think it's going to be exceptional I think that when you're at the, when you're at the, you know what's the line from Batman it's always darkest before you have done.
Speaker 1:I think that the amount of people that have sort of faced this fire and looked at it and going, oh, this is not good, like that's when you pull really capable people off the sidelines, like when Epstein came to the cups, like I think we're at that moment where someone's like no, I can fix this city.
Speaker 1:The candidates that we've had have been a function of just like a general malaise where there's like we got to get people to vote yeah, I, I'm. I don't even know if people realized how close it was that you know, in the state's attorney's race, 1,400.
Speaker 2:Yeah, after they found 10,000 votes.
Speaker 1:By the way, like that delta is insane. And I just think that if you get to a point where people have become so frustrated and so you know they're finally going to be like you know what, if I don't do something, like I can't really bitch about what's happening, like you know, it was really interesting.
Speaker 2:You're saying that because I had a young person that I asked who was 24 and she didn't vote and she's like I should have she goes, but there's, so she goes. You know, they don't talk about any issues, it's just mudslinging. She goes, I don't know, like, like what is going on or this or this, and then I just said listen, just always vote against the incumbent. It's whatever you do. If you don't like how things are, just vote against the person that's in office.
Speaker 2:Yeah no, it's uh, that's the least you could do just be like I.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm hopeful, I know that we have some younger folks that work for us and they're pretty disillusioned but and they voted for him and now they're like well, I see, I see your point. Now I'm kind of you know, they were one issue voters.
Speaker 1:They were. They were riding the train to work and they felt like the trains were unsafe and they were overly crowded and they were unreliable and I think Brandon spoke about it Paul really didn't and they became one issue voters and wanted to take a one issue vote on the train.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And that's literally okay, we're getting closer to california on that? Despite trying to explain to them if they don't have a job to go to, because nobody wants to invest in the city, you don't need to worry about riding the train.
Speaker 1:And now again, with the benefit of hindsight, they're like oh, I kind of see what you meant and I think it perhaps is making them a little bit more engaged and a little bit more interested in trying to figure out. But they are disillusioned with the system because they don't think it works and they don't think it matters. It does, it does, absolutely it does.
Speaker 2:Get out and vote. Yeah, all right, but thanks so much. I think we kept it positive we did.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we're still below California.
Speaker 1:I'm just wondering you know you're, you're, you're using your sister?
Speaker 2:as a, as a well listen. So this is California top of my head. And here's Chicago. It's close. All right, thank you so much. I would give out Mike's information, but he doesn't want to talk to any of you. So well, before we close, what's going on with the, the dating scene in chicago? Oh my goodness, nothing. Nothing is there like. Is there a scene still like party scene, like it wasn't when we were younger, or no?
Speaker 1:I mean, I think there's a party scene. It's not. That's not where I um, that's not where I expect to meet. You know this is march.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right so that made me he's available. You can dm me if you want his phone number. I'll give it to you. All right, thanks so much. The Jason Theory, this will be out actually first week in May and hopefully by then, god knows, the city is still standing. But thanks so much. Subscribe and and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you.